I've had VN for 8 months now and I think I see why each of us are being affected differently. It seems to me that after the initial bouts of VN (maybe first 6 weeks) your inner ear is injured. If you are perfectly healthy after that you will be fine, the problem is when other things come up. For instance I was fine (no dizzyness at all) until I had a sinus infection. It came back and then went away again. I ate some bad food, had stomach problems for a week, it came back again. Now I'm dealing with a tooth that the dentist screwed up with a root canal and guess whats back? It seems to me if you can remain perfectly healthy you can wait out this VN (or labs) until the inner ear heals (2 years I've read). So if your bothered constantly with vertigo or dizzyness it may be something else is causing your brain not to be able to compensate for the dizzyness. This is my theory and I'm sticking to it ;)

Hi Neddy
Glad to hear that you are fine apart from when you are ill with other things. I am glad the dizzyness hasn't bothered you too much and and you are largely able to get on with your life apart from these blips. You are very fortunate.

Can I give a different opinion. I too have had labrynthitis, since Nov 2004. However I wasn't as lucky as you and although I was very healthy in other respects (I didn't even have a cold until about a year after the onset of labs) I suffered with dizzyness greatly. My whole life has been affected and is still very affected even though I am much better than I was. I used to have a lot of setbacks when I would do normal day to day activities that would cause decompensation, and I spent a lot of time battling to just go to work every day - even now 18 months on I still struggle and can't drive to work. I have had little anxiety so that is not a reason why I am so affected.
Funnily enough though, when I am sick the dizzyness doesn't get any worse or doesn't flare up - I have had a number of sinus infections recently and the dizzyness hasn't bothered me with it.

I just had the labyrinthitis worse than you, maybe the damage in my ear was worse or that the damage that I had was in a different place.

Just wanted to give a different side of the story as I know there will be a lot of people on the board reading your comments and getting worried as to why they are so different to you, and why they possibly aren't recovering as well as you have.

Hope your tooth gets better soon.
Take care
Tesss

HI Neddy,

If you go to Dr Rauch's online otology clinic in the archive it explains the process of compensation and does, indeed, say that other factors - ill health, stress etc - can interfere with that process. The vestibular nerve never heals - it is scarred. Instead a process happens which is termed as compensation - the brain learns to work in tandem with the signals from the damaged ear.

Tess, as you say, in terms of recovery time and what can be coped with at different stages of recovery, everyone is different.

best,